Julia Oldham

Video artist Julia Oldham studied art history at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and then received her MFA from the University of Chicago; she currently lives and works in Eugene, OR. Oldham’s work has been screened/exhibited at Art in General in New York; MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, NY; The Drawing Center in New York, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, IL; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA; the Dia Foundation at the Hispanic Society in New York; the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Julia Oldham also works in collaboration with New York-based artist Chad Stayrook; together they are known as Really Large Numbers.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Julia Oldham combines live action video with traditional animation to create narratives about science and nature. Raised by a physicist, an avid gardener, and a pack of dogs in rural Maryland, her formative years were saturated with science and nature presented to her in a loving family setting. Her love affair with science burgeoned as she grew up and developed as an artist, and scientific curiosity emerged as a character in her work. She creates fantastical worlds by layering animated sequences and video footage, and through this process explores the far reaches of outer space and the deep seas, has dreamlike encounters with animated birds and coyotes, and finds the potential for romance in mathematical equations. Always featuring characters searching for the impossible (either animated or played by the artist herself), her videos are guided by longing and desire that is rarely requited, and is a reflection of the artist’s own impossible desires to understand the unknowable and communicate with animals. She employs imagery and storylines that develop from a combination of scientific research, dreams and obsessive reading.